Even Angels Cannot Kill The Messiah
by The Shadowscythe
Summary: The Earth is now a desolate and ruined place, but hope remains - In 1995 Tiberium arrived and the first Tiberium war began. In 2000 Second Impact rocked and drowned the world. Now in 2015, within the GDI blue zone known as Tokyo-3 the Angels have arrived to reap and devour what is left of Humanity and it's pretense of a civilization.
1. Chapter 1

Some time in 1947

Harding/De Vaux Expedition

Somewhere in the Judaean Desert

* * *

Keel Lorenz yet again used his sleeve in a desperate attempt to wipe away the desert sands that had mixed with the sweat clawing at his forehead in the blistering sunlight and heat.

The convoy had crept and crawled through the shifting sands and towers of rock on what again seemed like another blur of a day as the rag tag combination of wheeled and tracked vehicles surrounded by their keepers and tenders on foot with horse and camel made their journey towards their eventual meeting with their contact and hopefully the fruition of centuries of waiting and planning.

While the world may have stopped burning in the fires of conflict and war two years before, the majority of the men who made up the expedition where indeed armed with almost every form of man portable weapon, from pistols to rifles, machine guns and even the occasional bazooka – the vehicles themselves had been black market purchases from the spoils of war, tanks and transports from both the Allies and Axis alike had been procured by almost slight of hand for the trip, even if his fellow SELEE members had doubt in the eventual goal.

Goals within goals, organisations and cults within religions and nations – shadows moving like silk before a flame that could only be seen on the far side of a dark labyrinth of secrecy and abyssal depths.

SELEE however had finally claimed enough of their power within their respective nations with the re-building of the post-war period to start moving pieces around the world and move towards their secret and ancient goals.

Somewhere in these sandstone hills a year and a half before in a not too distant region known as the Qumran Caves a Bedouin child had been searching for a lost pet and found a cave, the cave containing the first dozen of a set of Scrolls from aeons ago.

Aeons before mankind had even come to exist – foretold in prophesy and half-legend passed through agencies in secret for a series of tasks and instructions that would one day lead mankind upon the path of gods set forth by their creators.

Athanasius Yeshue Samuel was the first to witness the scrolls and recognise them for their value as he himself had been a SELEE plant in the region from many years before and after ensuring he knew the location of the rest of the scrolls, he ensured their secrecy by having the child show him the location of the caves before allowing another SELEE planted agent to put a bullet in the child's skull and allowing the desert sands to claim the un-marked grave.

Mixed in with the ancient guides where documents in papyrus, parchment and bronze of human source and after translation they would eventually be released to the public.

The rest however and the messages within them would remain hidden until the chosen time.

What Lorenz and the others within the expedition had not expected however was that Mar Samuel would find a partial translation of the alien scripts within the human bound ones, and a prophesy about the expedition itself as it was happening. A set of instructions with codes against codes, cyphers that would somehow become apparent as the expedition set forth once again for another, second set of caves within the region that where somehow far closer and far deeper than their original destination.

Thus the expedition continued their search, not marked on any maps and following instructions older than life on earth to a sullen hollow surrounded on three sides by raised desert sandstone that led into a depression within the shifting sand and dried earth where men and industrial machines shifted mounds upon mounds aside to find the subject mentioned at the end of the translation.

The Messiah of Glass.

Keel once again attempted to wipe away the mixture of sand and sweat from his brow as he huddled over the text, every time he thought he was coming close to a translation he would scribble assorted words and even vague sentences down into his notebook, every time he blinked or looked away the words etched into the ancient stones seemed to have moved impossibly to form new patterns and a new meaning would present itself. When he had attempted to translate with another present the text would somehow only produce gibberish and what was even more incomprehensible is that every single man present would somehow have translated a completely different set of gibberish.

Yet when alone with the stones, despite their shifting and almost eldritch nature Keel somehow managed to catch glimpses of what he and his brothers had spent lifetimes working towards, what they had been handed down from generations of different cults and organisations.

"Sir! We've breached!" the cry from one of the workers broke his concentration and he looked up from the tablets and his book. He looked up to see the shifted earth had given way to an underground tunnel that the expedition had broken into from their efforts.

"Good, ver good" Keel pronounced in Germanic accented English "Prepare ze torches for ze men and ze ropes – ve vill be explorving them in vull" as he stowed his notebook and left the stones with a nearby guard. Yes, the time of prophesy really was coming to pass.

Some time later as feet touched down at the bottom of the tunnel and incandescent bulbs brought light to the long forgotten tunnel that Keel himself had joined the inspection within. He looked across to the smooth, round and gently curved walls to find that they where almost mirror smooth with no signs of brick work or carving. He was unfortunately several decades to early to have given them the description of what they really where, somehow and utterly anachronistically laser carved by hands that he may not have recognised as human.

Down one direction the walls formed together into a simple dome of a wall, permitting exploration no further. The only other path was down into the abyss.

So down they went.

Somehow from their breaking through to the surface only recently there was breathable air, none of the telltale signs of ancient sealed pockets of Methane or worse gasses. No hieroglyphics marked the walls and no other paths to be taken.

Even with the weight of destiny on his shoulders, Keel could not help but be a little shaken by the tunnel surrounding him.

After what was almost an hour of slow, walking descent into the Earth did they reach their destination and the sickly ooze of light that appeared in the distance.

Somehow the light that bled from the end of the tunnel was a mixture of ethereal blues, greens and reds that marked the edges of where the tunnel expanded to become a vast underground room or cavern.

In it's centre was a raised circular dais of un-earthly alien material that seemed to be a dark blue cross between metal and stone that was surrounded by a thick moat wider than at least three times the height of the tallest man in the group and filled with crystals of the same colour that lit the room, some blue, some red, but the vast majority where green and reflected and refracted their own sickly light from within.

Surrounding this moat was another ring of the alien metal which then descended into stairs that met with the cave floor – the alien metal and earthly stone fusing at a level where they seemed to blur together where Keel could not tell where one ended and another began, many years of research later would serve to show the two materials blending together on a molecular level.

Looking up – he could see a mirror reflection of the floor but upside down in the cave ceiling, the same dais, the same inverted moat full of crystals and the same ring that blended up into the cave roof.

In the centre of the mirrored floor and ceiling, the exact centre of the save was a cross made out of the same chrome blue metallic rock and crucified upon it was a man, stigmatised upon the cross through the wrists and ankles with thick nails of an unknown blood red material.

A bald figure in rags, who impossibly started to stir at the sounds the newcomers had made on their entrance to his prison.

"Quivkly! Bring vorth ze tunnel crozzing equivpment, ze medical suppliez and ze tranzlator!" Keel yelled back through his thick accent to the rest of the group as the assorted mercenaries and explorers sent cries back to the rest of the main group above the ground.

With the two virtues of both destination and purpose groups of men returned with a series of wooden and metal ladders, a Gurney and medics alongside them and a dark skinned Arabian mercenary who was the only other translator for the expedition.

The ladders where assembled and lifted across the outer ring, and with the exertions of strength from Keel and the group it eventually met the other side of the moat and the first men made their way across.

As they moved with a cautious pace into the centre of the dais they saw the figure closely now with no bleeding or scarring from the stigmata through his flesh.

"Remove ze core material carevully" Keel said aloud as he recognised the blood red material for what it truly was "And touch it not vith your skin, uze glovez or toolz only"

Although many of the men within the core group where either members of SELEE themselves or close enough aligned to know the dangers of touching core material with their bare hands, it was still decades to early to know what LCL was yet despite the fact that skin contact with the material would reduce them too it.

Further adding mystery and danger to this Messiah of Glass.

As time passed the first of the bolt like nails of core material was removed and the figure crucified upon the cross started to regain his strength, the wounds inflicted an unknown time before healing of their own accord as the SELEE workers removed the nails and placed them within a nearby case for later analysis.

Which was when the figure started to utter his first words.

Keel grabbed the other translator by the shoulder and shoved him towards the figure.

"Tranzlate. Now." He growled with finality in his tone.

The words where archaic, chunks of tongues that eventually become other languages from both the ancient and modern world but as the second and third bolts where removed the man regained his strength further and hints of a meaning began to emerge.

"He says . . . " The Arabian translator began "Touch not the core material . . . nor the crystals . . . both are prisons which will . . . rend the soul?"

"And anything elze?" Keel replied.

"One other thing . . . " The Arabian man edged in closer to listen as the final nail was removed and the crucified man dropped to the floor on his hands and knees, the flesh from the wound closing as he took his first breaths of freedom in untold ages.

"He says . . . " The translator moved down " . . . he says . . . "

The figure moved suddenly and violently, both grabbing the Arabian man by the throat and rising to his feet at the same time.

Keel and the men surrounding them moved back, some rifles raised and clacked was their safeties where turned off but with a raise of the hand from Keel they where lowered once again as the figure in rags tested his strength.

As his grip tightened around the mercenary translators throat his power was slowly returning through him, coursing back into his veins as both knowledge and meaning was sapped through the veins and soul of the man and into him.

"He says" Kane stated aloud with renewed vigour and in perfect English "You cannot _**kill**_ the messiah"

For the first time since his imprisonment Kane allowed himself a smile which was far closer to a demented, evil grin. Keel watched as Kane continued to walk to the edge of the dais and stood with the other man held aloft over the other, alien material in the room and released his grip.

The Arabic man dropped and was impaled upon the crystal formations which the rest of the world would not see for another 50 years, the alien horror which would eventually be named "Tiberium" as the dais and ring began to glow with an ethereal and eldritch non-light as the man who was originally impaled was suddenly _devoured _by the crystal growths which at a pace far faster than otherwise natural broke through his skin, carried by the dying man's blood and bone as his flesh suddenly sloughed away and his entire being was infused with and then replaced by the plight below.

With the man dead, Kane allowed his arm to drop and turned to face the SELEE group at last.

"Come my brothers" he said aloud to the combined men as a whole "It is time to renew . . . and rebuild . . . the brotherhood of Nod"

Groups within groups, shadows within shadows Keel thought as together SELEE and the Messiah of Glass began the first steps towads their ascension.

* * *

_**A moment from Scythe himself**_

_Hokay – so I'm starting up a second fanfic idea whilst I'm still trying to make my way through Of Avatars and Harbingers (Don't worry I haven't forgotten about it, but writers block is a git I am currently trying to kill)._

_As far as I'm aware a Command and Conquer Tiberian Dawn/ Tiberian Sun and Neon Genesis Evangelion crossover has not been attempted yet (The only other one seems to be a post Third Tiberian war and Rebuild 3.0 story which hasn't been expanded on yet) so I'm looking forward to diving into the depths of world building and expanding on ideas like I did with Avatars and Harbingers and hopefully the combined change of writing style and setting should give enough leway with the writers block on both projects._

_Anywho – more will be on the way shortly so until then, enjoy this first chapter and as always -_

_**Tarrah for now.**_


	2. Chapter 2

1997

Sarajevo

Brotherhood of Nod Temple Prime

* * *

Building blocks upon blocks, plans upon plans – Kane gazed through the bulletproof glass as two of his commanders attempted to piece together the chunks of prophecy and human plans that had bet into motion.

The first piece had been his freedom from his prison 50 years before. Next had been working his way up and through SELEE members as the post world war 2 world gave birth to the United Nations as members of the Brotherhood and SELEE alike pushed their influence and power through unseen tendrils into the very fabric of both organisations.

Being ageless immortal with the mind and memory of a human he could never plan for events he could not have foreseen – the few memories he had prior to his imprisonment where of human beings living in mud huts somewhere in deepest, darkest Africa, he passed on agriculture and mathematics where he could and generalised his goals down until he was taken.

By whom or why where another of the century, or perhaps millennia long gaps he would have to fill.

The gifts of the modern age upon his repatriation to the world during the early 1950s helped with these goals no end, physics, language and technology had finally caught up to some of the points he needed to meet and culture encouraged the spread of the former but not the major components he needed to complete them.

Computers where developed, moving through their periods of vacuum tubes and silicon chips, genetic technologies could plan out segments of the human genome, but at that point they could not be used to generate entirely new material, or even edit existing genes within the human "frames" he had at his disposal.

But with the Brotherhood already existing in a limited sense, all Kane had to do was take control of the organisation that had somehow already been waiting for his return and start to influence the equatorial third world nations as the world passed into the 1960's and 70's and the proxy battles of the cold war that spread it's influence into the 90's.

Eventually though – even with certain organisations awaiting the arrival of Tiberium in 1995 as he had translated from the scrolls that described from the many patterns of events that would soon come to pass – their tendrils could not have spread everywhere in their entirety and the United Nations had given birth to another organisation known as the Global Defence Initiative.

Despite there being some ways to coerce, bribe or simply kill their way into the newborn defence agency to place agents from both Nod and SELEE within it, they remained out of the control of Keel and Kane alike.

So as the turn of the galaxy brought the planet Earth into contact with the vast asteroid fields that sat at the extrasolar edge and with it, the crystal that had been one of Kanes two prisons. Tiberium started it's full encapsulation of the globe in Italy, somewhere near the edge of the Tiber River.

So with the fore-planning provided by SELEE and the Dead Sea Scrolls, the brotherhood has already been waiting for the arrival of Tiberium in the regions where it's growth could be promoted best – and the arrival of the alien Ichor had finally propelled industries and science to where he needed them to be.

Selling Brotherhood and SELEE technologies derived from reverse engineering or translating notes from the Dead Sea Scrolls had given birth to early Genetic Engineering technologies which had been sold or passed through to Corporate spies to kick start the various beginnings of what was needed to fight back against the coming of the Angelic ones.

Later as SELEE expanded further they used their United Nations ties further and directly created the "Artificial Human Laboratory" as the guise for researching artificial means to combat Tiberium poisoning in humans . . . it was in truth to create the basis of much larger and far more secret projects.

So feeding his own data to SELEE for them to feed to AHL regarding Tiberium exposure to human flesh both living and dead would speed up the process of genetic engineering and creation in real time considerably.

In turn he passed on various chunks of data regarding Tiberium and liquid Tiberium power cells to SELEE to then feed again into the resurgent GDI. Granted feeding technologies to the forces now directly assaulting his fortress left a bad taste in his mouth . . . it was perhaps the only way to utilise their own economic powerhouse to further push the world onto the path it needed to walk.

"I, we've taken serious - the temples been blown all to hell, we need to get out of here before"

"Sir!" One of the two officers, the one with a heavy setting and an eye patch finally turned to face the enigmatic leader "Upside has taken significant damage. Structural integrity has been compromised. I estimate GDI will have access to this command centre in approximately twenty minutes"

As he looked down on the two underlings he watched as the first to speak started to panic and falter – all of his men within the brotherhood where disposable to a point, but to watch one of his highest ranking within the temple itself was unforgivable.

The second officer turned to face the first and with an unthinking motion pulled his pistol and shot the man before holstering it again.

Impassive, Kane turned and left the command centre.

These pawns had played out their usefulness and now it was time to ensure the final steps of the future where in place.

He moved through to his private quarters – a temple within a temple in the usual ornate reds and blacks he styles the brotherhood within.

Logging into a terminal at a standing desk he began to fire off the final data packets to their various anonymous email boxes where various programs would bounce them off of servers around the world until they reached their final destinations.

A theoretical doctorate on using three cloned human brains as the basis for a rudimentary Artificial intelligence based off of his own research into a yet unborn PROJECT CABAL would be sent halfway around the known world and would end up within the Artificial Human Laboratory and eventually the hands of Doctor Naoko Akagi. With enough time and effort she would perfect the scientist/mother/woman system as she would eventually call it and give birth to the first MAGI supercomputers whilst his own Nod scientists would continue on with the CABAL aggregate system.

Into the hands of SELEE – he dumped gigabytes of information from the half-translations of his own ace in the hole.

He knew they had the Dead Sea Scrolls – but he held another artefact that he had lifted out of unwitting locations. The first half had been within an impossibly old temple in Bolivia and the second embedded within Antarctic ice. Finding the being known as ADAM was one of his and SELEE's goals – but finding the Tacitus was a curve ball that didn't seem to play into any prophesy or foretold event.

It was a complete mystery.

An utter unknown.

Kane intended to keep it that way.

He had long ago sequestered the object away along with half a dozen objects within the CABAL facility that was utterly hidden away from the world until the time was right.

With the trail of breadcrumbs set for the search to find ADAM he linked a final set of documents for project Re-genesis and dumped the entire contents into public File Transfer Servers half a world away for eventual GDI/Public discovery . . . having that extended knowledge running loose in the world would dramatically cut short the time needed for the later SELEE goals.

With the last chunks of the databanks ready he knew it was time.

Time to face the proverbial music.

Taking the first of his secret elevators he rose through the gradually deconstructing Temple of Nod and rose into the sunlight that broke through the torn apart structure – light pouring through the bare ribs of the dying building.

He turned from the bank of ruined screens and took what would be his last breath of fresh air for many years. He knew he would return. It was a simple case of eventuality.

For now however, the Messiah needed to face his temporary death to the world.

In high orbit the GDI weapon known as the Ion Cannon had reached it's final charge – the slowly spinning blade of Damocles made it's final target confirmation and with the doom it had prepared in the milliseconds of being unleashed it reached the end of it's code line.

In a world of 1's and 0's there could be no grey – and with a simple statement /END OF LINE the satellite split the sky asunder.

The first stream of particles ignited the air as it forced the vacuum channel from orbit to the ground as it then entered full activation and fired the Ionic stream of charged energy directly at the entrance to the temple.

The effect on the ground was devastating as the air buzzed with sound from every direction, the atmosphere took on the tang of ozone that had been ripped from the Earths extremes and pulled down to the ground and anything caught in the beam simply ceased to exist as the energy stream either incinerated it outright, or ripped apart the links between their component atoms and then incinerated the atoms themselves.

Kane watched impassive as the beam started to approach him, simply erasing the temple in which he stood.

Hidden from the world and never to be seen by living eyes, he raised his arms to embrace the coming fire as everything faded into white and the temple was no more.

Devoured for all intents and purposes by holy light.

The flagstones and foundations had been laid, the path had been set and the first steps taken, the first Tiberium War may have come to a close but the true war was only just beginning.

* * *

_**A moment from Scythe himself**_

_Hokay – maybe NOT having writers block immediately after penning the first chapter was not part of the plan but I managed to pull this second chapter together enough to include one of the main events of the C&C games (ignore 4 – 4 never happened and if you think it did you need to seek advice from a medical professional) alongside more events from the EVA timeline without having to resort to the horrors of writing a massive as all feck timeline._

_Huzaah!_

_At best we have maybe one more chapter of exposition and setting the scene/tone before the story begins and that wonderful bitc- I mean . . . protagonist we all know and love will be introduced._

_Until then – thanks to all for the favourites/story subscriptions, if you want to add a review you are more than welcome to do so guys and gals . . . and . . . until next time . . ._

_**Tarrah for now.**_


	3. Chapter 3

2007

International Tiberium Convention / ADAM Threat assessment / GDI Formation Committee

GDSS Philadelphia

* * *

He looked down upon a poisoned world of red and green.

His name was Doctor Ignatio Mobius – one of the few scientific voices in the world outside of the Brotherhood of Nod and it's various funding groups and nations who understood at least, the true threat of the two poisons threatening to destroy the world.

But the truth he understood without having to class the "invaders" as poison, the planet known to it's original inhabitants as "Earth" was in the middle of a three way war between it's original Biomes and their inhabitants and the two new-coming ecological systems and the conflict they brought with them.

Life would have survived in some form if the turn of the galaxy and the hundreds of Tiberium infused meteorites that the endless revolutions of the milky way had brought together with the Earth had been all the poor planet had to deal with.

Impact sites on every continent. The mutations of flora and fauna. The birth of Tiberium Gyres and the endless crawl of the insidious green crystal as it slowly evolved itself and everything else around it into forms not seen on this Earth.

Watching as the world was slowly infected over the five years since the ethereal cancer was unleashed upon the skin of the planet was bad enough.

Then Second Impact and the four Adams ripped the world asunder.

Somehow a relic of another ecosystem had been intertwined with the Tiberium seeds raining down upon the planet.

September 13th 2000 would be another one of the many dates that would forever change the fate of the human race.

The Kitsuragi Expedition had been at ground zero of a GDI expedition of the south pole, exploring the effects of the deep cold environment on the spread of Tiberium when a massive meteorite struck the Antarctic ice and the four beings known as "Adam" went through their birth throes after landing on the surface of a suitable world.

Before the Kitsuragi Expedition gave their lives forever to knock the four alien beings into slumber, the alien quadruplets had shifted the orbit of the Earth – forcing the North/South revolutions of the Earth into a more direct line with the rest of the solar system and removing the turn of the seasons for all eternity.

At the same time, the four Adams melted an enormous portion of the Antarctic ice and infused it with alien LCL which created Tsunamis and Tidal waves that ripped the world apart – almost every coastal city was wiped off the face of the planet within the next twelve hours.

The oceans where sterilized, but the worst was yet to come.

The previous state of the oceans where due to the Salt content of the planets seas, which combined with the lower temperatures and global tide flows had once impeded the growth of Tiberium.

With the exception of the pollutants of human existence. Plastics and waste components of industries had formed a number of Gyres on the seas of the world. With Tiberium being spread in the atmosphere by even this age, the spread of the element had been contained on these floating islands, unable to spread to the majority of cut off Island nations through a mixture of tidal flows and human intervention.

Until the four Adams struck the Earth and sterilized the seas, and the tidal waves from their arrival struck almost every coast on the planet and the two threats combined killed 2 billion people in less than a day.

And another billion survivors died from particulate Tiberium poisoning in the months that followed – the crystal had been battered and ground into a powered form that had been seeped into the LCL oceans of the entire planet and had struck almost every single Man, Woman and Child who had survived the original event.

With no sea life left alive, no salt in the oceans able to contain the spread of Ocean borne Tiberium and a world that had been seeded beyond all compare with the seeds of one Ecosystem that had infected the original due to the arrival of another – the chances of survival had been handed over to the remaining forced of the Global Defense Initiative from the United Nations as many original nations who had formed the special forces organisation no longer existed and someone, some how needed to regain control and bring forth order.

GDI had forced massive evacuation orders combined with a combing action to try and save what remained of the other half of the human race.

Almost 2 billion humans moved from zones deemed at risk of the now massively overwhelming extraterrestrial damages caused by the Malignant but undirected Tiberium and the Immense but unknown threat of the Adams forced mankind to build new fortress cities to try and contain the damages caused by these eldritch foreign influences as the Brotherhood struck out in a few but devastating guerrilla actions to undermine the efforts to save the species without their expired messiah.

Wall after wall built around cities that in turn where built upon ruins – designed to slow down possible invaders from the possible Brotherhood of Nod, Tiberium and it's mutations and the new threat from the skies in the forms of the Angel classified life forms . . . but out of the few that where built . . . even fewer managed to hold their own as the Earth itself seemed to turn against them.

All the weapon systems in the world.

The tallest of walls.

These did nothing to turn away the spread of Tiberium in it's airborne form, spreading and growing upon the very walls meant to stem the growth of the crystal.

They also did nothing when the very people the walls where meant to defend where hiding in their numbers the already mutated. People, innocent people desperate to hide their changing bodies in the chance, the hope of safe harbor ended up being the end of many of the nascent fortresses come metropolises as the lack of health care in the right time or space would result in another corpse – another node for the dreaded material to take root within. By the time the body was found, sometimes in an alleyway, sometimes an abandoned apartment or house then the only was to stop the spread was to abandon entire city blocks and burn everything down to the bedrock.

And sometimes even those drastic measures proved to be useless. London 2 was proof enough of that. The entire United Kingdom was one of the worst affected Red Zones on the planet – now resembling an entirely alien ecosystem where no terrestrial life survived.

In the end, the only real solution was a combination of defenses, fortresses, retreats and perpetual scorched Earth actions to burn away anything that Tiberium could use to grow before it could take root.

Near endless salting of the Earth, combined with a repeated foundation of other sterilizing contaminants that rendered even more portions of the planet dead forever more.

Eventually however, Human ingenuity held firm and some form of safe ground was forged between the lifeless soil, LCL seas and Tiberium poison.

The GDI defended blue zones.

Washington 2. Moscow 4. Hamburg 2. Tokyo 3. Detroit 2. A short list among a dozen others.

With their links between the ground and GDSS Philadelphia linked with the GDI prototype Kodiak mega-shuttles and various other projects needed to at least provide some form of infrastructure to this post-dual-apocalypse world the remnants of mankind managed to force their way into producing clean fusion power with Tiberium based technologies, alongside orbital skyhooks, sonic based technologies and the beginnings of Military application based Walker and Hover based vehicles.

As always, the threat of war drove the wheels of technology and innovation.

Which is why he was here today, with almost a hundred other scientific minds from around the world to take the elements of various other projects known as GEHRIN and the Artificial Human Laboratory together under GDI supervision to devise a new weapon system to defend against the Angel class beings that would as all the evidence suggested, arrive in 8 years time.

Apparently vast stretches of progress had been made, Mobius had seen the reams of paperwork and digital evidence pass through from his secretary and interns, broken down into usable, digestible chunks and them turned into almost after action report style documents for the GDI generals and their underlings to digest as a workable concept.

Tiberium based life forms could be killed with conventional weapons – although in some cases considerable effort would need to be used.

Angelic life forms operated beyond any and all knowledge of conventional biology, seemingly telling the laws of time and space, thermodynamics and the square-cube law to go and fuck themselves sideways to next Sunday as far as human understanding could comprehend.

So a new sub-division would be assembled from these smaller organisations and placed under direct GDI supervision in a chosen fortress city, the organisation was under the provisional name of "NERV" and was using the combination of multiple schools of science and warfare for an entirely new creation known as "PROJECT EVANGELION" under various descriptive titles as "ARTIFICIAL HUMAN WEAPON SYSTEM" alongside other more esoteric research into something called "AT FIELDS" and their manipulation as well as a dozen other documents, research sections and future objectives. Some of which laid inside his field of expertise.

Many of which didn't.

Apparently his own direction within this project would be the use of applied Tiberium Sciences to created advanced battery and energy storage systems on a scale that had never been built before by human hands – even with Fusion power or Thorium reactors, Lithium cells lined with Graphene and Liquid salt storage batteries – the scales of energy this project seemed to require was an entire order of magnitude higher than anything that had ever been seen on the Earth before with the exception of the GDI Ion Cannon system.

To utilize those kinds of levels, something close enough to put mankind on the Kardashev scale on par with using all the power available in the solar system for an entire "Unit" in this project – and the higher-ups wanted to build at least three?

The prospect was terrifying.

As he looked down onto the bloodied and cancerous Earth, he had wasted enough time in thought at the window. Time was marching ahead regardless of his input, but at least here – in the birth of this organisation known as NERV he could have an impact beyond the mere theoretical again.

Since the arrival of Tiberium and the first war.

Brushing the wild blonde and gray aside he prepared himself finally for the meeting of minds.

* * *

_**A moment from Scythe himself**_

Well uhh – again I'm plundering world-building but I'm still typing away without turning the history of the story into a bullet point checklist so I'm counting this as progress.

Nuff said.

I'm still tip-tapping away with both this project and Of Avatars and Harbingers . . . trying to nibble away at writers block so hopefully I can work my way into the meat of the story in the next chapter.

Until then –

_**Tarrah for now.**_


	4. Chapter 4

June 22nd 2015

GDI Extraction Convoy

Outskirts of Tokyo 3

* * *

The last 48 hours had been a confusing mess for one Shinji Ikari.

For a start there had been the platoon of GDI infantry that had surrounded his Aunt and Uncles home complete with ground vehicle and air support that had sent the entire community of coastal villages that had once been rural hillsides deep within rural Japan.

Then had come the flurry of orders. The paperwork that consisted of a National Diet mass signed order, including signatures from the Prime Minister himself to hand the custodial order from his Aunt and Uncle back to Shinji's father with immediate effect.

Next had come the paperwork that placed that immediate effect order under GDI jurisdiction due to his father being assigned as the head of an entire "organ" of the United Nations under GDI control.

Which in effect had placed him as an internationally recognized asset of something that was currently deemed "classified" to him under the control of a sub-organisation known as NERV and something known as EVANGELION.

The whole thing was backed up with a "Deprivations of Liberty" act that had apparently been signed on his behalf by a dozen national leaders alongside well known international voices whom had turned their previous attitudes towards personal freedoms against the walls and signed the teenagers freedoms away.

The reams of paperwork combined with two dozen armed soldiers setting up a firebase practically outside his front door alongside the implication that his teenage freedom was about to be revoked combined into one futile action.

He slammed his bedroom door shut, put his weight of his back up against the closed door as he slumped against the floor and cried against the futility of it all.

His entire life was being turned upside down, he would have to leave his home for as long as he had known it, leave the few friends he had made over the years and leave the place he had managed to claw together and mark as his own because his father and his military goons had decided he suddenly had a use besides being the continuation of his fathers genes or whatever fucked up idea that his so called dad had for recalling him after sending him away for what was now over three quarters of his life.

Looking around the pieces of his life marked around the bedroom around him, posters of the few bands that survived his ancestral apocalypse alongside the bits and pieces of a life that had already been uprooted before he had even been born.

The simple fact of the matter was that the "home" he had known with his aunt and uncle was a pre-fabricated unit that was mostly made of titanium and insulation sheets because his carers had been forced from their marital home into a mass produced twin unit setup due to the rising sea levels from second impact, and then forced from whatever site they had been moved to because of that event due to the constant spread of Tiberium.

As a result, the few belongings that Shinji could call his own outweighed those of his carers by a ratio of at least three too one.

But somehow, it all seemed stupidly unfair.

As if, beyond all reason despite everything being dumped upon him he had somehow brought all of this own on him from on high either by thought or by action unknown.

Shinji had always felt as if his existence was some kind of stain on the universe as a whole, and what was happening in the here and now was some kind of proof of that assumption.

He knew, inside that he had no choice to accept the hand that been dealt to him but the simple fact that he had to play the role of the disenfranchised teenager would also be expected of him.

So he had to play that role as well.

He could hear the voices of his aunt and uncle in the unit beside his own, the kitchen and main living room was set alongside the second unit which contained the two bedrooms and shared bathroom – so even his action of locking his bedroom door was futile because he has forgotten to lock the adjoining bathroom doors.

Evidently one of his soon to be captors knew this as well – he looked up across the room to the almost hesitant knocking from the bathroom door.

"Shinji?"

The voice came through twice – the first was accented, and although he did not know enough English to know that the owner of the voice was American, the second voice which was overlaid at the same time was electronic and synthesized from some kind of handheld translation unit.

"May I come in?" the double overlaid but only half understood voice inquired.

"Do what you want" Shinji muttered in a tone that reflected his inner dissonance "Seems like you can do whatever you want anyway . . . "

The metallic door that separated the twinned bathroom slid open, and a young looking GDI trooper with a messy but short cut blonde haircut stood in the doorway with a sly grin on his face.

The man stood into the doorway and began to speak.

"Sorry about having to use the translator but I don't speak Japanese, I've never been able to get the hand of it." He began "The names Mike, Michael McNeil"

The smile was sly, but honest – the face of the man who wore it could not be much older than a decade than Shinji himself. Although Shinji was intelligent and coldly aware of the tricks that people played on themselves in the world, he found himself being brought to the point of being oddly unarmed by the look on the face of the soldier before him.

"May I come in Shinji?" The man questioned, adding on the assertion from before.

"Do what you want . . . " Shinji muttered in reply.

"You know, My room used to be a lot like this" McNeil said as he looked around the teenagers bedroom before squatting on his hands and knees within arms reach, but at the side of Shinji.

"I say it used to be like this, Nod bastards killed my parents and me and my brother Jake used to share a lot of rooms kind of like this with whatever we managed to take with us along the way"

"I'm sorry about your brother . . . " Shinji continued for politeness sake as he moved into the next line of the conversation " . . . and your parents" he finished.

"Don't worry about it man" McNeil went on with the dialogue, trying to open a truly equal level for the two too converse "I've come too terms with the truth . . . Nod wanted to turn me into a weapon when they took my parents hostage . . . and my brother too. When GDI stepped in they gave us a new life. Which is why I'm here to talk to you now"

The silence following this statement was physically audible, as if reality itself was stopping for just a moment to give sway to these few seconds to give dramatic sway to the moments that followed.

"I'm truly sorry for the pieces of paper in the other room – but if it helps, in any way at all – I have been through them myself"

"Really?" the apprehensive teen replied.

"When Solomon led the troops that attacked the compound me and my brother and a hundred of others had been kept in we had been left adrift after second impact, forced into mass orphanages without the hopes of being fostered. The only way we could see to pay back to those who had helped to free us was to join GDI and help those to needed to be freed in turn. Half a lifetime later here I am, and my brother is back in Hamburg somewhere helping to try and keep the yellow zones clear and look over those who had been hurt by them. We still talk. Sometimes"

McNeil's reaction was an utter surprise to Shinji – who was somehow expecting some kind of contrived or scripted call to arms.

"Look man, I'll break it down to you. One guy who's almost a kid to one who is" McNeil continued "I don't know fully why we're here beyond the shit that isn't redacted on the paperwork – but we've come down from the base just over the mountains behind your home to take you to Tokyo 3 to your dad and some NERV chick who outranks the shit out of all of us here called Kitsuragi"

"Really?" Shinji inquired, caught slightly off guard by the troopers sheer honesty.

"Completely true my friend – I will also admit my C.O asked me to talk to you here – but I sympathize man. I will try and make it easier . . . anything I can pack or anything I can do to help . . . but dude – You've been conscripted to come with us – what can I do to help?"

Shinji turned his head, while he still held some suspicion inside his head he at least wanted to know why he had been brought into the shitstorm that had been unleashed on his front door.

"Could you help me pack my things? And come with me?" Shinji asked, trying to return the hand of favour that had been extended to him.

Even with three times the personal belongings than his so called forced foster parents, it did not take long to pack his clothes, personal items, posters and loose belongings into the marked GDI crates for Tokyo 3.

His aunt had held him close, with tears at him being ripped away from what she perceived as a household she had built with a son she had never given birth too.

His uncle had shook his hand firmly – while he had taught him the virtues of being steadfast and the attempts to teach him to cling to external ideas of honor and the defense of those who could not defend themselves. Although Shinji felt a teenage burning towards these ideals he had never had a chance to actually practice them for himself.

He would never admit the fact that he did indeed secretly hope for the chance to practice these feelings.

With a final wave of farewell to his foster carers, he and his belongings where packed into the rear of an APC he did not know the official designation for, but was about as long as the unit he used to call him in length. Even including his belongings it could comfortably barrack a group of six troops inside it's body, or up too twenty soldiers for a short time.

Shinji laid sideways inside the drop down bed of the machine, close to the drivers cabin – his curiosity over-riding his bodies own directive for mere mortal sleep in the desire to learn more about those who would be his delivery drivers.

Listening through the unfiltered reports both from the commanding officers of the convoy of which McNeil was a member and the other members was the passing through of Tiberium fields somewhere between where he used to live and the almost mythical fields themselves to greet further methods of human built safety.

Even with these overheard reports of these travels, the almost Argonaut level voyage through what used to be mainland Japan, he almost did not believe it. Eventually however, the sheer levels of human attention combined with tiredness, hunger and attention caused him to fall asleep some time between the hand over between GDI and NERV handover was supposed to take place.

Shinji was snoring into the side of his barrack bunk, inside the amphibious APC when the Angelic life form known as Sachiel ripped it's way into the world – almost at an opposing direction to Shinji Ikari.

Almost as if the arrival of the teenager who had no idea of the events of the world around him had beget the reactions of god like entities of which he had no idea of their existence.

Cause and effect on a scale so far out of human understanding that only the gods themselves who rose to challenge the opponents that where being drawn towards the arena which they would be drawn into conflict would truly understand.

Far outside the armored cocoon of his APC, Sachiel began it's slow and lumbering walk towards Tokyo 3.

Orca fighters and bombers began their attack runs as the towering figure of black flesh and white bone continued to make its almost pedestrian stroll through the ruins of the old pre-Tiberium world which was utterly uninhabited by anyone who had half a sense of self, or at least a sense of self preservation.

As the fighters broke off – the Orca bombers began their last bombing run as the combined fire of a few hundred Titan walkers and Predator medium tanks combined their efforts on taking out the wandering god.

At this moment, Misato Kitsuragi was making her efforts to meet an armored convoy as the armored convoy made it's own plans to move around a sudden change of orders regarding a mountain range marked as being "REDACTED – NO ENTRY"

At the same time, a red phone in a base known simply as the Geofront want off with a blaring digital vibration and a flickering red LED as a GDI general Shinki would never meet replied "Understood. We'll deploy them according to plan."

The Orca fighters and bombers scattered.

In high orbit – no less than six Ion cannon satellites converged on the lower hemisphere to target the mountain region which Sachiel was wandering through.

Through all of this, Shinji Ikari slept.

The six magnetically charged channels met, somewhere between the feet of the youngling god.

Because the god itself had not been the channel of the attack, it chose not to pay attention to the flurry of ionic particles that combined between it's feet as the air around it proceeded to ignite at a temperature close to the surface of the star of Sol itself.

However, that did nothing to slow the slurry of ionic particles, nor the ignition of the atmosphere around the target, or the melting of the bedrock around the Angel as the sky burst into flames.

Within the Geofront base, several kilometres underground and with over two thousand levels of human built defensive measure between himself and the creature . . .

. . . Kozo Fuyutsuki felt a chill ride it's way down his spine. Which was not at all helped by the foolish GDI officer crying out loud "It seems you won't be needed this time!"

" . . . what's the target status?" One of the various GDI or NERV underlings questioned.

"With that explosion, it must be obliterated" another assumed.

"Restoring visual" another, more level headed technician reported as the static resolved itself into a vision of hell itself.

Sachiel, regardless of the square cube law, regardless of the law of thermodynamics and regardless of the laws of common fucking sense stood where six ion cannon blasts had stuck a wound into the exosphere of the planet itself, with newfound gills ripping through it's skin to tear through the atmosphere of the world whilst a second skull forced it's way through and underneath it's existing face with red, burning eyes.

"And those where our trump card . . . "The soon to be demoted GDI general muttered as he sank back into his seat defeated.

"How is this possible?!" another questioned, another puny human who had lost his nerve in front of an alien god questioned.

"Goddamn monster!" The last made as a futile statement as his fist thumped into the console – as if the actions of a mere human punching a statement of machine metal could pause the march of a godling creature.

All the while – The redirected GDI convoy and Misato Kitsuragi moved to make their inevitable meeting at the very outskirts of the third fortress city whist the logistical efforts around them moved to make sure the third child made sure his meeting with destiny.

The third child stirred as the APC rolled it's way through a river ford, and Mcneil watched as the teenager shifted in his sleep.

"Take it easy kid, we'll get you there on time" he said, before he turned his eye back to the screens inside their golden painted metallic shell.

* * *

_**A moment from Scythe himself.**_

Hokay – So in the last chapter I caught the eye of ArcAngela who proclaimed my work as being "fucking good" at that writing thing – she is a damned funny youtuber I have a lot of respect for and I am a member of her discord community. If you happen to like eldritch level shit in the world of Starbound with the addition of other memes then go ahead and search for her channel on youtube and enjoy the funnies.

As for this chapter and the one before it – I'm attempting to weave the two universes into each other on a base level in the hopes that something new comes out of that combination which is what I hope every crossover writer aims for (rather than character A meets character B and sexy times happen) so I'm hoping between this chapter and the next chapter I can do both the C&C and EVA settings justice to the point where people will enjoy reading this for BOTH the settings together.

No shitty blue Renault this time around however.

In the mean time, I'm about to watch Eva 1.11 and 2.22 and the series together whilst waiting for the C&C remaster to come out whilst I continue to whittle words to a page . . .

_. . . so in the mean time, Tarrah for now._


	5. Chapter 5

June 22nd 2015

GDI Extraction Convoy

Outskirts of Tokyo 3

* * *

Watching the shifting lines and triangles on the LCD display Mcniel could only take guesses at what the higher ups had planned after what he learned from his squad Lieutenant was a combined Ion Cannon strike on the target designated as "ANGEL-03" which was represented as simple red triangle against an ordinance survey map as the swarms of green triangles that marked GDI units moved around it.

Like most adults who had been children through the first Tiberium war, the Ion Cannon was often portrayed as the Defence Initiatives Gladius from the sky and that image had left a lasting impression in the minds of a generation. The lance of blue-white light that speared through the sky and obliterated the Brotherhood of Nods Temple Prime had been one of the most viewed videos on the fledgling internet regardless of the fact it was a fuzzy 320x200 pixel video converted into macromedia Flash of all things, at least back when it still existed.

Back in the days before Second Impact, before the internet had become a military or scientific resource only. In the time where home computers where still a thing, alongside consumer electronics, digital media and mobile phones.

Dead and forgotten alongside things like international holidays, a fishing industry and coastal cities.

As a result, those blurry and almost forgotten pixels where another ghost of a dead golden age.

The implications however, that whatever this thing was had somehow taken multiple hits from the GDI's space borne scalpel that had rooted out dozens of human cancers from the Earth filled him with dread, even over the shoulder of his CO within an armoured amphibious cocoon that could withstand a direct hit from an Obelisk of Light . . . he felt cold, and vulnerable.

What made him feel worse however, was the fact that for reasons he could not figure out this teenager his squad had been sent to retrieve somehow tied together with whatever the hell that thing on the screen was and he didn't like where that kind of maths added up. His own half-described childhood was a dark history in which NOD had rooted out hundreds of families for certain sets of genetic codes for a project that they thankfully didn't get to complete thanks to the receiving children being saved by GDI. Now he felt as if he was knee deep in the past repeating itself . . . but he was supposed to be one of the good guys.

So why the hell did he feel as if he was an accomplice to the kidnapping of this kid.

To say that it left a foul taste in his mouth was an understatement.

Watching the screen zoom and pan across to the convoys current position however, he could at least see that his team was not purely responsible for directing one lone kid through a goddamn war zone.

A flight of Orca Bombers was taking another strafing run at whatever the hell the enemy target was, and he was not surprised when the red triangle did not waver or disappear afterwards. After all – something that could take multiple Ion blasts was not going to be taken out by a handful of VTOLS with high explosives.

Watching the sea of targets form and split however, he did catch sight of a ZOCOM team deployment towards the target before another designator was headed towards the convoy at high speed, but not under GDI control.

NERV-46-KTSG-HMLR

The lieutenant leaned into his display as a voice spoke to him through his headset unheard by Mcniel.

"Rodger – we'll meet you at south south east 86 degrees, personnel transfer and return. Ikari Heavy out."

The C.O turned to the drivers cabin and yelled across the instructions "SOUTH SOUTH EAST 86 DEGREES. SIX KLICKS AND HALT!"

"YES SIR!" came the confirmation from the cabin.

"Mcniel" the officer said without turning to look over his shoulder.

"Sir?"

"Wake the kid – Kitsuragi is gonna want him to have a full shake down before he gets to Tokyo 3"

"Yes Sir" Mcniel replied as he turned to the sleeping teen before he gently shook Shinji by the shoulder.

"Shinji?" He asked as the auto-translator kicked in once more, giving the soldier the strange dual-tone of speaking "Wake up Shinji"

"Hmm-wha?" Was all Shinji could mutter in confused reply.

"Wake up man, we're about six kilos out from meeting your handover contact"

"Six Kilos?"

"Oh . . . sorry . . . we're Six Kilometres out and she's in a fast mover so it won't take long for the change over"

"Oh . . . " Shinji half-understood the military nomenclature but wasn't entirely sure how to reply, as such his standard shy reply took precedence and he continued into " . . . that's. Nice? I think"

Mcniel patted him on the shoulder as he lifted himself up to sitting.

"You want a coffee or something before we get there?"

"Uhm . . water . . please?" Shinji answered.

"It'll be hot – the water recycler only gives out hot water for coffee and ration packs I'm afraid so you'll have to wait for it too cool"

"Oh . . . okay" Shinji replied.

A few moments later he was handed a paper cup full of fresh, boiling hot water.

"Just don't burn yourself man, not worth the paperwork" Mcniel said as he pulled his face into a smirk, then turned away to re-don his GDI trooper helmet and the large assault rifle Shinji had not seen him carrying on his first meeting.

A short while of confused curiosity later, the vehicle came to a halt and Shinji could hear a high pitched whining noise not unlike anything he had ever heard before in his life as Mcniel and his commanding officer left through the rear doors of the APC.

He heard muffled voices alongside some translated tones for a few minutes before the CO returned, saying nothing to Shinji as he returned to his seat and issued more orders and confirmations in American accented English.

Another minute or two later Mcniel replied with a sly smile on his face as he quickly said "Eyes up dude, you're gonna enjoy this"

Shinji only had a hairs breadth of a second to question the statement before she entered the APC.

"Officer on deck!" Mcniel announced, and every soldier in the vehicle rose to their feet, turned and saluted the newcomer.

It took every ounce of his being to somehow not make his teenage jaw drop.

She was _stunning_.

Later on in life, Shinji Ikari would come to question if this was indeed the point where he developed something close to being a fetish for women in uniform.

His eyes darted from point to point, almost scared to stay in one place in case she accused him of something he would later regret.

The boots, going up to the obviously long legs in combat trousers, his eyes moved up to the waist and torso as he looked across the outer kevlar – the split opening just at the point of cleavage, hinting at what laid below. The arm raised in salute led his eye to her face, with the point of her chin, the freckles, the purple hair tied back for the moment in a neat ponytail underneath a beret which matched the rest of the GDI gold uniform.

If he knew what was to come, he would perhaps feel even more guilty than he was feeling right now at this moment as she snapped of a crisp salute and handed what was one folder of a pair to the teams Lieutenant who opened it without asking questions – it seemed to Shinji to be two pieces of paper, one being a new set of orders and the other a map grid with co-ordinates.

He only asked the one question, which sounded more like a statement "Through field 337-Lima?"

Kitsuragi replied only with a nod before he then turned to the Drivers cabin again.

"Wheels up, East south East, 52 degrees for 7.5 Klicks to friendly AO" he said aloud, the Driver replied once more with a simple "Yes Sir" as Mcniel and the other trooper closed the rear doors and the APC set off once more.

Moments later as the convoy began it's new journey towards a little known secondary base somewhere just outside the region loosely defined as the Tokyo 3 extreme defensive line Misato Kitsuragi sat down next to Shinji Ikari.

"Shinji, My name is Misato Kitsuragi, Major Misato Kitsuragi – on loan from the Global Defence Initiative Japanese Division to your Fathers organisation within the UN known formally as NERV" she began with a look of seeming compassion on her face "and I've been told to give you this."

The look of compassion dropped, she now looked impassive but now cold. Obviously she knew of the envelopes contents.

Shinji opened the manilla casing with an idle thumb and opened the contents.

The first item was an identical set of documents to the ones he had already been handed, this time signed off in triplicate by his father.

Another set of documents followed on yellow and purple paper – custodianship orders that he didn't bother to read because the last item dropped from the envelope into his waiting hand.

It was an incredibly rare item to see in this version of 2015. In this world, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, IBM, AMD and dozens of other high technology companies had been folded and absorbed into other organisations such as Heckler and Koch or Lockheed Martin alongside other organisations such as Hyundai, Rolls Royce, Rover and other heavy industry organisations like JCB.

As a result consumer electronics had never even passed by the gate of 1998, let alone the Second Impact of 2000. Disposable consumer electronics where an utter oxymoron in a world that would never had been able to sustain them regardless.

So to see the obviously military designed, chunky and heavy, rubber padded 12 inch touch screen tablet was as alien to Shinji as watching an utterly alien object in ours.

"It's a touch screen tablet" said Misato "press the screen to open the video file, I just hope you can hear it over the engines"

"It's fine" Shunji uttered as he pulled his SDAT music player out of a trouser pocket and detached the 3.5mm headphone jack "I have these" he said as he held the headphones up for Misato to see.

"Well in that case . . . you have a whole new world to see . . . " Misato introduced as Shinji pushed the jack into the tablet and then slid each pod into his ears. With a simple tap he opened the only video file on the display.

"Hello, My name is Ignatio Mobius" Began a tall white man with scruffy blonde hair in badly accented Japanese "And I am one of two head scientists of Project Evangelion"

"And my name is Ritsuko Akagi" said the other Japanese woman with auburn hair cut to shoulder length "And I am the other of the two head scientists of Project Evangelion"

"And together" they both said in sync "This introduction video is for new pilots of the joint project effort, Global Defense Initiative and NERV Evengelion Combat Cyborg System.

A few bland infographics passed before his eyes before the image finally settled on a display readout of something called the EVA SERIES and a figure who's height somehow reached at least 200 metres tall.

Only at this point did Shinji actually think to himself what in the ever loving fuck he had gotten himself into.

* * *

_**A moment from Scythe himself.**_

Hokay – so I had to rework this idea halfway through for the general purpose of the crossover.

This is a world generally hardened for war as well as two apocalypses in less than 20 years, of course they are going to have a pilot orientation program to be given to new recruits before they arrive.

Even if the people who made the orientation videos have no fucking clue that said pilots are determined by destiny rather than random determination.

But the forces of the GDI, even if they aren't all knowing – are at least going to have prepared various methods and means of introducing shit in front of the pilots instead of a direct introduction, ominous lighting and telling Shinji to get in the fucking robot.

I'll be building more into this idea as I move through – the whole idea is to weave the two universes together, and that includes mindsets on top of settings and characters.

So . . . more tippy tapping writing to come in the future.

. . . _**In the mean time, Tarrah for now**_


	6. Chapter 6

**June 22nd 2015**

**GDI Extraction Convoy**

**Outskirts of Tokyo 3 – Tiberium Field 337-Lima**

* * *

Shinji watched through the beginnings of a censor approved version of a child friendly introduction to the EVANGELION Combat Cyborg System.

Wireframe after wireframe appeared of technical readouts and weapon systems, of something called an entry plug and control yokes, about mind machine interfaces and A10/20 interfaces.

The problem was that all the information was presented in such a dry fashion, information without context or need – afraid to delve too deep into the subject matter or obtain the attention of their audience.

As he watched he thought that the faux blonde looked kinda cute in a MILF-ish kind of way, but the other blonde guy who was apparently German focused so much on facts or data that it was given without a real method of delivering the information. It was merely presented as if the viewer was already supposed to know what a "liquid Tiberium power cell" was or the fact that it was supposed to last 15 minutes in a prolonged combat situation, and that if it was ruptured it was supposed to be ejected from the EVA unit before contamination could take place.

More facts, more useless information – almost exactly the same as the dry factoids and empty facts that the Japanese school system had presented him with ever since he had entered formal education.

Around him however, unnoticed for several minutes the soldiers had armed themselves with their large chunky rifles and donned additional armour and helmets. As he looked up and around he saw that even Mcniel looked uncomfortable despite being within several tonnes of armoured personnel carrier.

He did not know how to tap the screen to pause the video, so instead he simply removed his own earplug headphones and looked around the cabin to the back of the lieutenant, then Kitsuragi and then back to Mcniel.

"What . . . what's going on?" he asked in a shaky, uncertain voice.

Mcniel saw him talking, and heard his words second hand through the inbuilt translator – he waved to get Misato's attention as he looked across through the few viewports within the vehicle.

"Sorry Shinji . . . this may be normal for you, but for our generation . . . " Misato paused for a timer longer than was comfortable for both of them "This is uncomfortable" she said as she rose to her feet and gestured for Shinji to do the same.

"Come and see . . . " She said as she motioned to the controls to open two viewports, one for herself and another for him.

Eire green light flooded the cabin through the now open main viewports as Shinji looked through the thick nanotech constructed glass and polycarbonate windows into what looked like a vista from an alien world.

In every direction he could see vast vistas of alien crystal formations, mostly green with some red and blue twisted within them. The ground itself which was not covered in the cancerous growths was blasted, blackened and barren with no features to be seen except for the crumbling remains of concrete and rebar that had yet to be devoured by the xenofauna infection.

In the sky, vast black and grey clouds shifted at their own will, seemingly ignoring weather patterns and wind directions, the occasional lightning bolt burst out from the heavens and met with another lightning bolt that also burst out of the ground and an ionic bolt, precursor to an awaiting storm exploded in the sky between the two.

He looked across, the entire blasted hellscape would have been close to a nightmare for the teenager if it had not been an absurdly common fact of life for a post Tiberium world.

Shinji tried to imagine, if only for a moment the green fields of grass that once would have been in the place of the crystals, the trees that would have been there before they had become Tiberium blooms, the buildings that had once been a town or village before the alien cancer.

The problem was in this day and in this age, so much of the old world had been lost that the young had no comprehension on how to imagine the world that had once come before.

As he gazed across the glowing field however, something caught his eye.

He saw her very briefly, stood between two of the larger outgrowths of Tiberium. A girl almost his age, perhaps a little older or a little younger with blue hair and red eyes stood amidst an alien infection that should have killed any human near its outskirts let alone the dead centre of the field in nothing more than a white and blue cloth school uniform.

Most human beings would have had trouble surviving this deep in an alien hell in full power armour for more than half an hour, let alone simple woven cloth for a few seconds.

In the time it took for him to turn his head to his adult companions he notived as his vision shifted she had disappeared.

Shinji blinked for a moment, looking across the Tiberium field for any sign of the girl.

Yet he saw nothing.

For a moment he doubted himself, wondering if it was a trick of the mind or perhaps a trick of the eye and yet he thought to himself that he definitely did see something. In the midst of the moment he had looked across the cabin and saw that Kitsuragi had stopped looking through the glass and was in fact sat back down once more and Mcniel was looking in the opposite direction.

Common sense caught up to him, and his thought processes roughly outlined the fact that he had seen something utterly impossible and his seniors had not, and that the utter bizarreness of the moment was . . . something he was better off not telling anyone about.

After all, who would want to raise a fuss?

Especially over something that they where not sure of themselves?

He settled down into his seat once more, as he tapped a button on the side of the idly talking tablet to silence it and darken the screen and chose to watch the others in silence as he apparently grew closer and closer towards his destination.

* * *

Gills made of fluid bone and quantum substrate ripped through liquid fire as Sachiel was nearing the end of it's regeneration after the concentrated ION cannon strikes had forced their way through it's AT field and ripped at the flesh beneath.

It was a being formed of raw concept – pushed onto the universe through sheer force of will by the force of it's AT field and fuelled by the zero sink of energy from it's very soul. For those who insisted that those concepts where merely imaginary however, they would give the scientific labels of S2 engines and applied Macro scale Metaphysics.

It didn't have words, or a language – its thought processes where purer than those derived from those of Lillim, focused to a point in which every single thought or emotion was an all encompassing force of being that was both essence and purpose.

When it arrived it was the Angel of Water – the messenger that would unite with ADAM and bring the word that would return the world to what it was supposed to be.

For now however, the message could wait.

Right now it needed to deliver something else, and so Sachiel adjusted it's purpose to the opposite and it's soul became one with the shift in concept.

Ripping energy states out of the molecules of the air, the photons in the burning fire, the very quantum foam between universes it put the final segments of it's flesh into sync with the soul.

The Angel of fire breathed deep from the race of energy states around it, and death would fill it's wake.

* * *

Shinji lost track of time in the back of the APC as the convoy finally reached their destination, but he could tell it had not been long as the tablets auto dimmer function had not turned on to save the devices battery.

He watched through the same window as a large unusual vehicle with a series of mechanical drawing devices on the front half and a large blocky containment crate on the back passed by, it's design a mixture of gunmetal Grays and GDI golds. The Tiberium harvester on it's way to continue it's never ending task of harvesting Tiberium in the attempt to either stem its growth or reclaim the devoured elements within it.

Behind it, more harvesters followed from the base now appearing before them. Large concrete walls marking the line between humanity and disease; dotted with the placements of guard towers, and component towers with a mixture of either Vulcan cannons or SAM emplacements atop them.

Behind the defences where a dozen or so buildings, some built entirely from concrete and human hands, others pre-built emplacements sourced from the bases Mobile Construction Vehicle. A wonder that had been in development from before the first Tiberium war, it allowed for a reasonably fast deployment of forward bases from their internal resources, pre-fabricated modules and internal robotics facilities that where by now, a rough combination of manufacturing lines, 3d printers and early nano-tech forges that allowed entire base camps to grow from nearly anywhere on the planet in a matter of days – ready to be manned and pushed to the services of war wherever they are needed.

There where barrack facilities, power plants complete with their component modules, a vehicle factory and three Tiberium refineries with more vehicles than Shinji could count and far more troop and support personnel that he could both see and not see besides.

Eventually the convoy drove through the entire facility to a large concrete and titanium tunnel in the side of a nearby mountain, and within that opening was the first of many doors to a massive series of underground tunnels and support bases which delved far into the Earth.

The door was stamped in gold paint, a massive maple leaf cut diagonally with the word NERV in stylistic text which was next to the GDI Eagle in it's own circle logo.

**NERV/GDI AREA 09 – GEOFRONT ACCESS C.**

The doors before them opened in a vast and complicated procedure. Followed by the doors behind those and then another set of doors behind those again with enough steel, titanium and concrete re-enforcements to withstand a direct nuclear strike if needed to.

The convoy rolled on, as the massive vault entrance closed, and the entire entrance room dropped into the bowels of the planet as it was in fact, a megastructure elevator in it's own right that descended into another far more massive megastructure beneath.

Before them all within the convoy the walls rose away as the convoy continued down into the Geofront, and Shinji saw an entire underground lake, a vast pyramid in gold and black and entire fields of crops and trees which again where interspersed by more GDI sub bases and defences and facilities that extended both above, throughout and below the ground into nearly endless armouries, bastions and fortresses of their own. Independent of the primary base, but more than able to contribute and defend themselves if needed.

During the daytime vast mirrors would direct and funnel raw sunlight from the surface above and during the night the cities three cold Fusion reactors would power equally vast arrays of lights and apparatus capable of producing light on par with the gifts of the sun.

Through these massive, utterly astonishing sights Shinji Ikari only had one word he could say.

"Cool . . . " he uttered, fading off into awe and silence at the end.

* * *

_**A moment from Scythe himself.**_

Okay so yeah . . . despite the fact that the recent events of the world have given us all more time to write out things like this, I've been suffering far more with Anxiety as of late which has lead to both this and Of Avatars and Harbingers being pushed back due to the simple fact that I know WHAT I want to write, but I'm struggling to fill in the gaps to get there.

But another Chapter has been thrown out into the world . . . so maybe I can get over both writing slumps and get a few thousand more words out there into the wild.

So until next time.

_**. . . Tarrah for now.**_


End file.
